Opera Parallele Presents Philip Glass' 'Les Enfants Terribles'

Friday, May 26, at 7:30 pm; Saturday, May 27, at 2 and 7:30 pm; and Sunday, May 28, at 2 pm
Opera and Dance come together with an added layer of newly-created, multi-dimensional film and projected elements in Opera Parallele's (OP) new production of Philip Glass' 1996 hybrid dance-opera Les Enfants Terribles, which will be performed May 26 through 28 at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Caroline H. Hume Hall. Based on the 1929 novel by Jean Cocteau, Les Enfants Terribles demonstrates the author's belief that the imagination can have a profoundly transformative effect on reality with powerful and sometimes unintended results. Created in celebration of the composer's 80th birthday year, the OP team for the production will be headed by Artistic Director and conductor Nicole Paiement and Creative Director Brian Staufenbiel with guest choreographer Amy Seiwert in her opera debut and media designer David Murakami. The production represents OP's second opera by Philip Glass, following Orphee in 2011.
Philip Glass' hybrid dance-opera spectacle is the last in his trilogy based on the works of Jean Cocteau. Singers, dancers, and media figure equally in Glass' experimental work that tells Cocteau's 1929 story of Paul and Lise, a brother and sister inextricably connected through loss, who live in a world of wild creativity and sometimes dangerous imagination. Staufenbiel and his team will create a stage environment that parallels the reality and fantasy of Paul and Lise's experience using dancers and film sequences as "doppelgangers" that reveal the emotions, motivations and back stories of the characters.
Presented by Opera Parallele